50 years of The Queen: Behind the Bellefonte bed and breakfast’s restoration journey

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There isn’t a flat surface on all three floors of The Queen, a Bellefonte bed and breakfast, that’s free from the magnetic pull of second-hand knickknacks and decor. Every corner reveals a new assortment of trinkets, and each trinket tells a story.

The Victorian inn brims with relics from the era: a metal opium pipe in the parlor, a set of wedding gowns in the upstairs bedroom, paintings plastered along every wall. Even the ornate wooden staircase doubles as a display shelf, each step carrying another stack of books, framed photo or box sign imprinted with a funny saying.

But it hasn’t always been this way, with this year marking the 50th anniversary of the B&B’s restoration journey.

It all started back when Pennsylvania native Nancy Noll and her first husband bought the Linn Street lot for $20,000. The couple moved in on Noll’s birthday, June 16, 1974, and she’s spent the past five decades turning it into a museum of hidden treasures.

“My therapy used to be (that) every weekend I’d go to auctions or flea markets, and I’d come back with truckloads of stuff,” Noll said. “When I turned 70, I stopped, and I looked around and said ‘Oh, God. What have I done?’”

Of course, the maximalist interior design style is part of The Queen’s charm as a B&B in the heart of downtown Bellefonte. Not only is it a well-preserved piece of the town’s rich Victorian history, but it’s one you can spend the night in — and there are no “do not touch” signs.

The Queen, located at 176 E. Linn St., will celebrate its 50th anniversary with an open house from 2-5 p.m. Sunday. There will be tours of the B&B’s guest rooms and garden all afternoon.

The Queen’s history

Although Noll can’t pinpoint the exact year the house was first built, there are clues that prove it’s been standing since the 1880s.

Queen Anne style architecture — known for its asymmetry, roof overhangs and turrets — gained traction in the United States in 1880, and a note written beneath the wallpaper of The Queen’s upstairs bedroom says the room was repapered in 1890.

Because the house was originally heated by eight open-coal fireplaces, Noll said, it makes sense that the wallpaper would have needed to be frequently redone. It also would have been affordable, as the Industrial Revolution made it so wallpaper no longer needed to be hand stamped and hand printed.

The Queen shares Linn Street with several other Victorian era homes, though they don’t all mirror the B&B’s eclectic exterior. For one, the inn comprises six paint colors and six building materials — a varied mix of stone and brick, rose and gray. It’s also a Painted Lady, the term for any Victorian home with more than three colors, as opposed to the monotone palettes of most early 20th century houses.

“If you look at the house across the street, you can take a knife and cut it in half right down the middle and the left side is a mirror image of the right side,” Noll said. “Where would you cut this house? Every floor has a different floor plan. There’s nothing balanced.”

When Noll first bought the property in 1974, turning it into a permanent home wasn’t in her plans. Instead, she thought she’d fix the house enough to sell it, then use the money to buy 50 acres of land in the country and live out the rest of her days as a hippie, she said. Even when her first husband left five years later, Noll figured she’d move out and buy an apartment.

It was her 10-year-old son who convinced her to stay — or, depending how you look at it, the ghost, Harry, that he’d grown somewhat attached to.

Harry was always an easy scapegoat for Noll’s son, an only child who often blamed the ghost for any broken rules or misplaced toys. It wasn’t until Noll heard her son’s bookcase come crashing down one night while he was tucked under the covers, she said, that she realized Harry might not have been all fiction.

Down the street, a friend of Noll’s was dealing with her own ghosts. She could hear the rustling of taffeta dresses and noticed her cats acting strangely around the house. While visiting one day, Noll said, she joked that she hadn’t heard from her ghost in a while — maybe he’d moved in for more company.

“Then, someone standing right (next to us) belched very loudly, like only a man could do,” she said. “We’re covered with goosebumps. And I said, ‘Oh, it’s just Harry. He wants me to know he’s here.’”

Restoration journey

Restoring The Queen to its Victorian roots has been a 50-year process, Noll said, and one done almost entirely by her and her current husband, Curtis Miller.

She didn’t make too much progress during the first five years — stripped the bright white paint in the kitchen, smashed down a wall cutting the entryway in half one New Year’s Eve. Then, the work really began.

The couple enrolled in classes at the local technical school, now the Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology, her husband signing up for residential wiring and Noll joining a cabinet-making workshop. They repainted most of the walls, one of which was originally a blinding Pepto Bismol pink. They cleaned up the outside, an abandoned plot teeming with 7-foot tall maple trees and uncut grass.

Some rooms — like the top floor bedroom that’s now Nanny’s Attic, one of The Queen’s five available accommodations — didn’t even exist when Noll bought the house, she said. The roofing nails poked through the ceiling, and there was no trace of the wooden, cabin-like appearance the room would eventually take on.

In addition to Nanny’s Attic, rooms at The Queen include Anne’s Room, the Governor’s Suite, a 900-square-foot apartment that takes up half the second floor and a three-bedroom private home on the adjoining property.

Each room has its own unique features: a cast iron slipper bathtub, turret overlooking the garden or shower equipped with massage jets. And beyond just emulating the Victorian theme, guests can also find bits and pieces of Noll’s personal history scattered throughout the building. The two wedding gowns in Anne’s Room, for instance, belonged to Noll’s mother and great aunt. Downstairs, you can find her great grandparent’s desk and grandfather clock.

Buying second-hand and honoring the history behind objects is important to Noll. Almost everything in The Queen was inherited or found at a flea market, auction or yard sale.

“I don’t buy new and throw away. I reuse and recycle things,” Noll said. “My dining room set came from a house down the street. It had been her grandmother’s. If I ever leave this, there’ll be a little note underneath it letting people know whose dining room table this was because I think that’s important.”

Fostering community

But Noll’s favorite part of managing The Queen, which became a B&B about 28 years ago, is the people.

Thirty-eight percent of the inn’s guests are returnees, so checking in visitors sometimes feels like having family come to visit, she said — family who brings gifts like homemade bread, bagels and truckloads of fresh flowers.

Staying at The Queen evokes a sense of community people can’t find at a traditional hotel, Noll said. In the mornings, families from different rooms convene at the dining table and chat over homemade breakfast staples like caramel French toast.

Noll has witnessed firsthand the kind of connection sharing a meal together can bring. Once, after talking all morning, two couples — one in their 80s, the other in their 20s — made plans to schedule their return trips together, so they could share one more breakfast. Another time, a Holocaust survivor visited and shared their story.

One of Noll’s favorite memories is when two women from State College came in to celebrate their anniversary. Despite facing confusion from some of the other guests, she said, the couple was comfortable enough with their relationship to answer questions, and breakfast turned into a roundtable of open discussion that in another environment might have felt inappropriate.

“It was really cool to be able to make that happen here — to present an experience and give some education,” Noll said. “Guests share so much with each other.”